We live in a world of profound contradictions. Some things are just
unbelievably strange. At times I feel like I've found a way to adapt to the
weirdness of the world, and then along comes something that just boggles my
mind.

The largest grassroots breast cancer advocacy group in the world, a group
called "Susan G. Komen for the Cure," has now partnered with the fast food chain
KFC in a national "Buckets for the Cure" campaign. The program began last month
and runs through the end of May.

KFC is taking every chance it can manufacture to trumpet the fact that it will
donate 50 cents to Komen for every pink bucket of chicken sold.

For its part, Komen is announcing on its website that "KFC and Susan G. Komen
for the Cure are teaming up ... to ... spread educational messaging via a major
national campaign which will reach thousands of communities served by nearly
5,000 KFC restaurants."

Educational messaging, indeed. How often do you think this "messaging" provides
information about the critical importance a healthy diet plays in maintaining a
healthy weight and preventing cancer? How often do you think it refers in any
way to the many studies that, according to the National Cancer Institute's
website, "have shown that an increased risk of developing colorectal,
pancreatic, and breast cancer is associated with high intakes of well-done,
fried or barbecued meats?"

If you guessed zero, you're right.

Meanwhile, the American Institute for Cancer Research reports that 60 to 70
percent of all cancers can be prevented with lifestyle changes. Their number one
dietary recommendation is to: "Choose predominantly plant-based diets rich in a
variety of vegetables and fruits, legumes and minimally processed starchy staple
foods." Does that sound like pink buckets of fried chicken?

Pardon me for being cynical, but I have to ask, if Komen is going to partner
with KFC, why not take it a step further and partner with a cigarette company?
They could sell pink packages of cigarettes, donating a few cents from each pack
while claiming "each pack you smoke brings us closer to the day cancer is
vanquished forever."

Whose brilliant idea was it that buying fried chicken by the bucket is an
effective way to fight breast cancer? One breast cancer advocacy group, Breast
Cancer Action, thinks the Komen/KFC campaign is so egregious that they call it "pinkwashing,"
another sad example of commercialism draped in pink ribbons. "Make no mistake,"
they say, "every pink bucket purchase will do more to benefit KFC's bottom line
than it will to cure breast cancer."

One thing is hard to dispute. In partnering with KFC, Susan B. Komen for the
Cure has shown itself to be numbingly oblivious to the role of diet in cancer
prevention.

Of course it's not hard to understand KFC's motives. They want to look good.
But recent publicity the company has been getting hasn't been helping. For one
thing, the company keeps taking hits for the unhealthiness of its food. Just
last month, when KFC came out with its new Double Down sandwiches. The products
were derided by just about every public health organization for their staggering
levels of salt, calories and artery-clogging fat.

Then there's the squeamish matter of the treatment of the birds who end up in
KFC's buckets, pink or otherwise. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
(PETA) has an entire website devoted to what they call Kentucky Fried Cruelty,
but you don't have to be an animal activist to be horrified by how the company
treats chickens, if you lift the veil of the company's PR and see what actually
takes place.

When PETA sent investigators with hidden cameras into a KFC "Supplier of the
Year" slaughterhouse in Moorefield, West Virginia, what they found was enough to
make KFC choke on its own pink publicity stunts. Workers were caught on video
stomping on chickens, kicking them and violently slamming them against floors
and walls. Workers were also filmed ripping the animals' beaks off, twisting
their heads off, spitting tobacco into their eyes and mouths, spray-painting
their faces, and squeezing their bodies so hard that the birds expelled feces --
all while the chickens were still alive.

Dan Rather echoed the views of many who saw the footage when he said on the
CBS Evening News, "There's no mistaking what the video depicts: cruelty to
animals, chickens horribly mistreated before they're slaughtered for a fast-food
chain."

KFC, naturally, did everything they could to keep the footage from being
aired, but their efforts failed. In fact, the video from the investigation ended
up being broadcast by TV stations around the world, as well as on all three
national evenings news shows, Good Morning America, and every one of the major
cable news networks. Plus, more than a million people subsequently watched the
footage on PETA's website.

It wasn't just animal activists who condemned the fast food chain for the
level of animal cruelty displayed at KFC's "Supplier of the Year"
slaughterhouse. Dr. Temple Grandin, perhaps the meat industry's leading
farmed-animal welfare expert, said, "The behavior of the plant employees was
atrocious." Dr. Ian Duncan, a University of Guelph professor of applied ethology
and an original member of KFC's own animal-welfare advisory council, wrote,
"This tape depicts scenes of the worst cruelty I have ever witnessed against
chickens ... and it is extremely hard to accept that this is occurring in the
United States of America."

KFC claims, on its website, that its animal-welfare advisory council "has been a
key factor in formulating our animal welfare program." But Dr. Duncan, along
with five other former members of this advisory council, say otherwise. They all
resigned in disgust over the company's refusal to take animal welfare seriously.
Adele Douglass, one of those who resigned, said in an SEC filing reported on by
the Chicago Tribune that KFC "never had any meetings. They never asked any
advice, and then they touted to the press that they had this animal-welfare
advisory committee. I felt like I was being used."

You can see why KFC would be eager to jump on any chance to improve its
public image, and why the company would want to capitalize on any opportunity to
associate itself in the public mind with the fight against breast cancer. What's
far more mystifying is why an organization with as much public trust as Susan B.
Komen for the Cure would jeopardize public confidence in its authenticity. As
someone once said, it takes a lifetime to build a reputation, but only 15
minutes to lose it.

If you want to support an organization fighting breast cancer, you might want
to know about the little known but extraordinary Pine Street Foundation. While
everyone wants to detect breast cancer as early as possible, the Pine Street
Foundation has been developing a remarkable alternative to mammograms. Susan B.
Komen for the Cure, you may know, has been one of the foremost proponents of
mammograms, suggesting their use for women as young as 25. But mammograms
involve subjecting a woman's breast to radiation, and so if repeated too often
actually raise the risk of breast cancer.

In a large international collaboration, the Pine Street Foundation has been
studying the ability of dogs to use their remarkable sense of smell for the
early detection of lung and breast cancer. The work is based on the fact that
cancer cells emit different metabolic waste products than normal cells, and the
differences between these can be detected by a dog's keen sense of smell, even
in the early stages of the disease. So far, the dogs' ability to correctly
identify or rule out lung and breast cancer, at both early and late stages, has
been around 90 percent -- approximately the same accuracy rate as mammograms,
with none of the radiation. In one study, for example, involving more than
12,000 separate scent trials, dogs were able to identify lung and breast cancer
patients by smelling samples of their breath. The dogs' performance was not
affected by the disease stage of cancer patients, nor by their age, smoking or
recently eaten food.

I've met the dogs involved in these studies (Portuguese water dogs, and
yellow and black Labrador retrievers) and I know the people who have designed
and undertaken these studies, and I've been impressed. Unfortunately, it is not
yet possible to be "screened" by the dogs to see if you have cancer, but there
is every hope that the concepts explored in this research will lead in the
future to cancer screening methods that are more accurate than mammograms, and
less harmful.

The work of the Pine Street Foundation is a good example of the many new and
hopeful possibilities that are emerging. Every day there are additional people
and more groups blazing a path to healthy food, real prevention, and less toxic
approaches to treatment. The Cancer Project, for example, promotes cancer
prevention, particular by advocating for nutritional approaches that reduce
cancer risk. Breast Cancer Action carries the voices of people affected by
breast cancer to inspire and compel the changes necessary to end the breast
cancer epidemic. And Beyond Pesticides works to protect public health and the
environment while leading the transition to a less toxic world.

Vibrant, grounded and inspiring, these groups and many others like them are
pointing in a healthy and sane direction. In a time when KFC has become the
poster company for pinkwashing, they stand before us as true examples of The New
Good Life.